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Show Atlas tailings hearing at Star Hall, Feb. 28 "100 years old" Serving Moab and Southeastern Utah Since 1896 Volume 103 Number 8 Thursday, February 22 1996 NRC meeting on Atlas tailings issue Wednesday Next Wednesday is public meeting time on the issue of the Atlas Corporations 10 million-totailings pile north of Moab. As part of the exercise required by the Environmental Policy Act, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) will conduct a public meeting at Star Hall, beginning at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Feb. 28. It is sure to be well attended. The clock is also ticking on a written comment period on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) and its companion document, the Draft Technical Evaluation Report (DTER). That comment period began in late January, and its short-terdeadline is already being criticized by those wishing n 60-da- Big change at Holiday Haven . . . The first of what may well become 1 50 new manufactured homes arrived this week at Holiday Home Manufactured Home Community. The large former mobile home park was purchased recently by Affordable Residential Communities of Ft. Collins, Colo. The south portion of the park, formerly used as overnight RV space, is being homes placed. Some will be converted to a manufactured home community, with both double and single-widt- h new owners plan to attract the for sale, and others for rentals. According to resident manager, Meg Richards, will and the in new their owners provide yard maintenance company retirees and second home development, old shower not The are facility in the former RV when for those services occupied. and other they properties section is being converted to a clubhouse, and physical fitness and other amenities will be added to the main office building adjacent to the swimming pool. The homes being placed in the new community are manufactured in Litchfield, Ariz. Officials seeking ways to ease burden of growth costs for long time residents of area by Ken Davey County officials say they want to make sure new development pays its fair share of government expenses in the future. That was some of the discussion last week at a special meeting of the county council, library board, county road department, sheriffs office, and fire department, who met to look at an upcoming capital improvements financing plan. More people living and working in the county will mean more costs for law enforcement, roads, fire protection, schools, and other services. As part of the master planning process the county has hired consultants to carry out the capital improvements study. It will look at what kinds of facilities and infrastructure improvements are going to be needed. explained county administrator Earl Sires in explaining what the study is designed to accomplish. The aim, continued Sires, is to come up with a fee structure for new construction so that local residents pay their own way, but not for growth. And that growth pays its fair share, but not more than it should. Step one was what is called a build-ou- t study, where planners look at current zoning and guess at how big the population could grow if all the available parcels were developed. The conclusion was that, with no zone changes, the county could accommodate 30.000 residents. Using that as a rough guide- line, the planners then estimate how much bigger local government must be to meet the needs of that many people. In general terms, the difference between what government costs now and what the new. larger county will C WEATHER STATISTICS N have to spend is what the cost of growth will be. The desire of county government is to have new development pick up that price tab. rather than having it fall back on people already living here now. But one problem the study showed is that, right now, many local government departments dont meet current needs. For example, the Moab Police Department and the Grand County Sheriffs Office, based on national standards, dont have enough patrol officers for the existing population. According to the study, the Sheriff is short 4 officers while the police are understaffed by 6 officers. Officials say it cost about $50,000 per officer per year for salary, benefits, equipment and vehicles. The existing Grand County Library, according to the study, is 40 percent smaller than it should be in a community this size. Fire protection is measured by response time, the period between the sounding of an emergency page to the point where firefighters arrive on the scene. In the Moab and Spanish Valley area, that response time is better than the national standard of 5 minutes. But fire chief Corky Brewer said that fire protection could run into problems. One difficulty will be expense. As the population grows, more equipment will be needed, and fire trucks, with price tags of $140,000 and up, are major expenses. Brewer added that another problem is available water to fight fires. Throughout much of Spanish Valley, not much planning went into approving subdivisions in the past, and that of- ten means badly situated fire hydrants now that many of the lots created years ago are now being built up. Brewer also said that water pressure can be a problem, and noted that on the west side of Highway 191, pressure is only of what it should be. Adding the county and city park acreage together comes to a total of about 35 acres. But ac one-thir- ) d t tual public recreation facilities such as ballfields, basketball courts, and playgrounds are for the most part available only within Moab city limits. Sires said that it might be appropriate to come up with a recreation facilities fee for new development. Thanks, but no thanks, officers told The Grand County Sheriffs Office received a call during the week by cell phone from a man from Durango, Colo, who had been rafting in Westwater Canyon. Colorado man The said that there was another man, also from the Durango area, who had turned his kayai in the Little Dolores rapid area. That man was reported to the sheriffs office as being very hypothermic and was in bad shock. It was a matter of life or death, he said. We were told by the reporting party that the incident had happened at approximately 4:30 p.m., and that the Colorado man was not doing well, said Sgt. Kent Green. The office made the decision that a rescue raft would not be any use because of the time of the call. Westwater can be very dangerous ion the daytime, and impossible at night, so the decision was made to have a helicopter brought in as the quickest and safest way to y to comment. This week the Grand County Council asked that the written comment period be extended for an additional 60 days, to give its members and staff sufficient time to fully study the documents. Grand County Administrator Earl Sires said Friday that the Council had only just received its copies of the two documents, even though time has already been running on the initial comment period for several weeks. The DEIS, which reaches no outright conclusions about what to uo with the tailings pile, obviously favors the Atlas approach of capping the material in place. It is nearly 300 pages in length. The companion DTER, some two hundred pages long, is filled with technical data on a variety of issues. Many of those issues are still considered Open Issues, in the report. In that category, for instance, is the possible future of the famed Moab Fault, tailings pile subsidence (settling), the Colorado River, and other issues. Obviously, according to Sires, there is not sufficient time left in the comment period for local and state officials, who have taken strong position against wanted a lift out, and we were told that he did not want a ride out and needed no help, Green said. The incident ended at night with weary would-b- 12 mide res- capping the pile in place, to adequately study and comment on the findings of the two draft documents. The uranium mill operated from 1956 until 1984 and has been owned by Atlas since 1962. The mill has been dormant since 1984, and Atlas has been in the process of cleaning it up for several years. The companys proposed reclamation plan consists of contouring the tailings to reduce and allow precipitation to drain naturally. Also an earth and rock cover system would be installed over the pile. That plan was originally submitted to NRC in 1988, and modified in 1992. Atlas hailed the completion of the draft documents. This is a major step in what has become a long and arduous process The preliminary conclusions of NRCs staff affirm what Atlas has asserted throughout the process, that our proposal to reclaim the pile in place is acceptable and less costly than the alternative, side-slop- said Richard Blubaugh, Atlas Vice president of Environmental and Government Affairs. The draft EIS contains three alternatives. The first supports the Atlas proposal to stabilize the tailings in place and leave them at the Moab site. The report concludes that this alternative is acceptable with respect to environmen- tal costs and benefits. The second option calls for moving all the tailings and other contaminated material to an alternate site. The primary advantage would be to free the current site near the Colorado River for other uses and eliminate the potential for impacts to the river. Disadvantages primarily relate to the transport of the tailings to a new site and a longer period of con- struction. The alternate also stresses that it would be considerably more expensive than the first alternative, although it has been favored strongly by local government and State of Utah officials. The third alternative, would be to do nothing. Because this alternative would not comply with regulations and is not environmentally acceptable, it was not evaluated in detail in the draft environmental statement, NRC concluded Decision time coming for election candidates Persons wishing to become canoffice in 1996 will have to make up their minds by Tuesday, March 18. That is the deadline day for filing for state and local offices in Utah, as the filing period opens on March 7. Five major state offices will be up for election, including governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, auditor, and treasurer, as well as United States representatives from all three congressional districts in Utah. In Utah State Senate District 27, which includes Carbon, Emery, Grand, Kane, San Juan, and part of Washington Coun- didates for public ties, the term of Sen. Mike will be up for Dmitrich election. Utah House District 71, including Grand, San Juan and part of Emery Counties, the post now held by Rep. Keele Johnson will be up for cuers back home. In Grand County, four county council posts are up for grabs this year. They include Council District (comprised of Voting precinct Nos. 4 and 9); Council District 4 (Voting Precinct Nos. 2, 6, 7 and 8); Council District 5 (Voting Precinct Nos. 3 and 10); and one council seat at large, to be decided by voters of the entire county. A State School Board member will also be on the ballot this year for the district which includes Grand County, along with Carbon, Daggett, Duchesne, Morgan, San Juan, Summit, Uintah, Utah and Wasatch Counties. Local school board seats in Precinct Nos. 2 and 3 will also be decided in the fall election. Retention elections will also be held for a District Judge seat in the Seventh Judicial District (Carbon, Grand, Emery, and San Juan); and for six members of the (Cont on Page A-3- ) achieve rescue. arrived in Westwater Cana location Called Little at yon Dolores Creek. There was no kayaking group there, Green said. We continued down river and found two small fires between Funnel Falls rapid and We Skull rapid. We were able to land the helicopter, piloted by John Rule of Arches Helicopter Service. This was a very difficult task due to the steepness of the canyon, the deputy continued. We made contact with the victim and he told us he was OK. The victim was asked if he Those were the days . . . of Transportation has always been important to isolated Moab, separated from the metropolitan part in 20th the Century. Utah by distance, and by the Colorado River, which was not bridged until early like those above, principally Freight to and from the community in its early years was hauled by teams to the railhead at Thompson Springs. A new history of Grand County will soon be coming off Commission, which is spearheading a drive to Centennial funds from Utah the of the presses, courtesy The Grand County history, written by counties. 29 of of all Utahs histories detailed produce Salt Lake City author Richard Firmage tells it like it was, according to Bruce Louthan, who headed the local Centennial Commission committee who retained the author to do the work. Story, Page 400-pag- e well-know- n A-- |